Communicate Your Way to Success as a Blogger

 

I used to train sales people. One of the key tenets of my training was:

The only truly effective time you have as a salesperson is when you are talking to your potential customers

Mike Helming

Are you trying to earn an income from the internet? If the answer is yes, then you are a salesperson. So this key rule applies to you too.

I saw a tweet this morning from an internet marketer, which went: “Gotta stop wasting time on Twitter, and get on with some real work.” Now I don’t know what the “real” work was, but if it wasn’t communicating with potential customers, then he’d have been better off staying on Twitter.

Blogging for an income is such a multi faceted job, that it’s easy to spend way too much time doing important, but ultimately non productive work. Stuff like:

  • Page / site redesign
  • Reading other people’s blogs
  • Researching new products
  • Doing the accounts
  • Looking at site stats

These are all things we need to do, but they don’t directly create income. The only thing that does that is “talking” to our potential clients, which means:

  • Networking socially on Twitter, for example
  • Writing great content for our blogs
  • Commenting on other people’s blogs
  • Communicating with people via email / phone / chat
  • And……well, can you think of anything else?

To be successful, we need to maximize our time in these areas, and that’s hard, especially if you’re working full time as well. One way is to use a to do list, but put all the productive stuff from list two above first. It means if you run out of time, you will have written your post, you will have caught up with some people on social networks and you will have made a few blog comments. You may not get to redesign that page on your site, or to read Seth’s latest pearls of wisdom, but that won’t hurt you.

Not talking to your potential customers will.

What are your thoughts?

Have you registered on Mike’s Life yet? You really should.

I think you’ll also enjoy these:

1/ I am Web 2.0

2/ Blogging lessons from geocaching

3/ Why you should switch to Google

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.mikeslife.org/trackback/152

You also will do well if

Boris's picture

You also will do well if your posts are created as a sales funnel and you ask for an action to be taken by the reader at the end of the post.

Boris's last blog post... By: Ethical Link Building Opportunities on This Blog - Blogging & Business Forums

Great points... I've found

Steve Anderson's picture

Great points...

I've found that commenting on people's blogs opens up all sorts of opportunities.

I think your point about speaking with potential customers is an important one and unless people have that somewhere in their thinking, then they may drift around on social media sites with no purpose at all (which is the direct opposite of the people that pitch all day long and forget to talk with people).

Having a to-do list so that tasks are tightly focused makes a lot of sense as there are so many distractions on the net.

Steve Anderson's last blog post... Pitchers In Social Media - 1 Strike & You?re Out!

Welcome!

Hi Boris and Steve - welcome and thanks for your comments.

Cheers

Mike

You're so absolutely right.

Marlene's picture

Thanks for putting this so clearly, Mike. It's so easy to get your priorities wrong in these matters and it's great to have some clear thinkers saying it like it is. I value your contribution in this way.

Join The ML Community

I'm An Advocate For

Get the RSS Feed

Friend Me!

Say Hi on Twitter

I Recommended

My You Tube Channel

Visit my You Tube Channel for videos all around about business and blogging.

Here's my most recent video:


Who's Mike?

I'm Mike CJ - welcome to Mike's Life! If you'd like to know more about me then please click About Mike.

If you're new here, please join the ML community using the form above.

And come and say hello on Twitter @mikecj

"Mike's Life is where you can stay current with the life, thoughts, successes and failures of Mike Cliffe-Jones. Never knowingly ordinary, Mike shares as much as possible about his work as a marketer and in business, as well as his enviable lifestyle on and in the oceans around The Canary Islands."

A Newstex Syndicated Blog